Someday You Will Be Loved
by cheshirecat101
Summary: Jim Moriarty actually met John Watson years ago, before there was a Sherlock Holmes, before he was a criminal mastermind, when he was just a kid crying on the swing set. John may have forgotten the encounter, but Jim never did. Oneshot, one-sided Johniarty, Jim/John, etc.


**Author's Note: Soooo apparently this is what happens while I try to work on Schadenfreude chapter six and listen to Death Cab For Cutie at the same time. So, here's a little Johniarty oneshot while I still slog through chapter six of Schadenfreude. This was inspired by the Death Cab For Cutie song by the same name. Please enjoy, and reviews are love!**

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"…and then I'm going to become a doctor. Maybe go into the army."

"Why would you ever want to do something like _that_?"

There was derision clear in the dark-haired boy's voice, but the blonde just smiled, unoffended. "Because I want to help people. Save lives. Serve my country. I want to do something for other people," he said, and smiled down at his legs. "I don't think it's silly at all."

"I never said it was silly," the dark-haired boy protested, seeming a bit put out that the other boy had interpreted his words that way.

His tone earned him a smile from the blonde, brilliant and genuinely warm enough to melt the dark-haired boy's heart. No, that wasn't supposed to happen. He wanted to pretend he didn't feel anything for the blonde boy, that his intervention hadn't been the only thing to successfully stop the dark-haired boy's crying.

"Feeling better?" the blonde asked, seeing the other boy retracting into his own head. Damn his compassion. It was addictive.

The dark-haired boy nodded, smiling genuinely for once in his life. He'd entirely forgotten about his sadness during the course of the comfortable conversation with the older boy, getting lost in the banter between them as well as the heartfelt notes that slipped in, falling with ease from the blonde boy's lips. He so easily, so _compassionately _conversed, blue eyes alight or cast down depending on the topic, voice rising and falling with his mood as the dark-haired boy just tried to keep up, unable to keep the small smile off of his lips as he watched the expressive older boy.

The blonde's blue eyes turned serious now, smile gone and his brow furrowed in concern. The dark-haired boy felt his heart skip a beat. "D'you want to tell me why you were crying now?"

The dark-haired boy looked away from him again, swinging his legs slightly so the swing he was on swayed a little, kicking the dirt with his feet. "I don't want to tell you. You'll think I'm stupid."

The other boy was silent for so long that the dark-haired boy turned to look at him again and found him gaping at him, mouth open. "Jim, when I first came over here you basically told me my life's story without me having to say a single word. You're absolutely brilliant, I could never think you were stupid."

Jim flushed at the positive attention the other boy was giving him. He'd never been called brilliant. Usually it was 'freak', 'creep', 'abnormal', at best 'weird' or 'creepy'. No one ever thought he was brilliant, and he'd gotten used to that, until this boy, who was feeding him attention and affection by the handful. And Jim was lapping it all up. He didn't know it now, but compassion was the most addictive drug he would ever know.

He kicked the ground a bit more, biting the inside of his cheek as he thought. The blonde boy waited patiently, playing with the chains of his swing and swinging back and forth slightly. His legs were longer than Jim's because he was older and taller, so his feet rested fully on the ground while Jim could barely kick the dirt with his toes. He was bigger in general, though, more heavily built while Jim was thin and slight. It made Jim want to crawl into his arms and never come out. "I was crying because…oh it sounds so stupid, but…because no one loves me," he said, the last part in such a small voice that the blonde had to lean closer to hear it. "My parents think I'm…abnormal. Troubled."

"Troubled?" the blonde asked, confused.

Jim snorted. "It's the word adults use when they want to say mentally ill but don't want to use the actual term."

"Oh." The blonde was silent for a minute and Jim snuck a glance at his face. He didn't look disturbed at all, just deep in thought, the turning cogs in his mind visible in his expression. Then; "I don't think you're troubled." He turned to look at him, blue eyes honest, and Jim was taken aback for a second, a rarity for him. He'd been expecting the blonde to reject him just like everyone else, cast him aside for what he was. But instead, the older boy gave him an honest smile and leaned closer to Jim, resting his cheek on the chain of his swing. "I think you're a brilliant, fantastic, amazing person and you deserve to be loved. Your family might not realize that, the people around you might not realize that, but I do. And you should too. Always know you deserve that, Jim."

He couldn't speak for a minute. Just stared at the other boy, heart pounding and a blush lingering in his cheeks, brown eyes wide with astonishment. He stayed that way so long that the other boy's brow furrowed and he reached out to touch Jim's cheek, jerking Jim back into awareness. He smiled—genuinely again, how strange for him—and turned to kiss the blonde's palm. A flicker of confusion crossed the boy's face at this, but Jim didn't care. "Thank you, John," he said, restoring a smile to the blonde's face. "Would you like to come over my house?"

John spent the rest of the day at Jim's house—which was startlingly empty, as the younger boy spent a lot of time alone—and Jim ended up falling asleep while they watched a movie on the couch, leaning against John's shoulder. When he woke up, he was lying on the couch with a blanket wrapped around him. On the coffee table, right within his line of sight, was a note that simply read, 'Someday, you will be loved'.

Years later, when John Watson met one Sherlock Holmes and had his life spoken at him in that brilliant way that astounded him every time, a memory struggled to the surface of his consciousness, a slight fragment. Some boy who could do something similar, what was his name? Jack or Jacob or something. Whatever it was, it was certainly not Sherlock Holmes, so he forgot about it again, and the name Jim didn't even ring a bell when he met the rather shy, somewhat bumbling, obviously gay Jim from IT. He forgot about that far off day in his childhood entirely, where he calmed down a crying boy and talked to him in warm tones and left him a note with everything he needed to hear.

Jim Moriarty, on the other hand, never forgot. He couldn't find the blonde boy he met again, no matter how hard he searched that particular playground and, in fact, every other playground he could get to. Even as he got older and his influence grew, he had nothing more than a first name and an outdated mental image to go off of, and his other ventures distracted him from really searching in earnest. Then, the unthinkable happened; he found him. With _Sherlock_, no less. John Watson. It'd become a habit of his, a compulsion; every time the name John crossed his desk, in some form or another, he would have them checked to see where they were from. A few false positives, and then he found him. Sherlock's little pet was the man Jim had been looking for for years, the man who was once a blonde haired boy who got Jim addicted to compassion, who had then disappeared without a trace, leaving behind only a note that had kept Jim focused. Obsessed. He'd wanted John Watson since he'd met him that day, and now he was going to have him.

And it was completely worth it, when he was finally face to face with him again, alone at last. When John was struggling to the surface of consciousness, strapped into his vest of explosives, the thick parka already on. When he gave Jim that adorable look of confusion, the same eyes and same expression from that boy years ago. When all of that confusion cleared and turned into pure shock when Jim produced a slip of paper from his inside jacket pocket, the page yellowed and worn with time.

_Someday, you will be loved._


End file.
